


Convalescence

by aubreyli



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post Star Trek: Into Darkness, and reciprocating those feelings by beating a superhuman with his bare hands, because the real story of STXII, implied burgeoning relationships, is about Spock finally figuring how just how into him Jim is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 15:22:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aubreyli/pseuds/aubreyli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard McCoy brought a man back from the dead two weeks ago, but it's still Spock who really surprises him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Convalescence

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Возвращение в мир живых](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1519973) by [krasnoe_solnishko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/krasnoe_solnishko/pseuds/krasnoe_solnishko)



Officially, the death of James Tiberius Kirk never happened. 

Or rather, the permanent and irreversible death never happened, because the RAD suit that Kirk had put on before heroically throwing himself into the bowels of the ship had managed to stave off just enough of the radiation poisoning for Dr. Leonard McCoy (soon to receive a special commendation) to restart his heart and save him.  At the same time, Commander Spock (also set to receive a special commendation) apprehended the fugitive John Harrison, and returned him to the _Enterprise._

Officially, these two events are in no way related.

Leonard doesn’t know what had gone on behind closed doors for Starfleet to come to that decision; he’d been too busy with more important things.  Spock had gone to the hastily erected temporary HQ to make the report, and had come back with a stack of confidentiality contracts for Leonard and his entire medical team, Scotty, Uhura, and anyone who had any inkling of what really happened. 

Leonard gets it, though.  He has a daughter, and he had a father once.

Unofficially, Jim Kirk is recovering well – or, as well as can be expected, all things considered.  It hadn’t been easy – the cryogenic freezing had preserved Jim’s body, but also paralyzed the serum.  Taking him out of the tube had allowed the serum to work, but also resumed the systemic cell death.  It had been like playing the slowest, most harrowing game of tug-of-war in human history, with death on one side and Leonard, his team, and the super-serum on the other as they dragged Jim’s body back to life, inch by inch.  And even then, it had taken days to repair all the damage, days of watching Jim convulse with seizures and hemorrhage out of every orifice and run fevers so high that Leonard had almost wanted to stick him back into the cryotube.

But that had been almost two weeks ago, and while Leonard still wants to keep him in a medically induced coma for a couple more days, he’s got every confidence that Jim Kirk is alive and will _stay_ alive.  What he’s going to be like once he wakes up, Leonard’s not so sure; the scans have shown that he’ll only suffer minimal loss of brain function and little to no memory loss, but it’s not like there’s a huge body of medical literature on the long-term risks of resurrecting someone using the blood of a genetically engineered superhuman – who knows what that super blood is going to do to Jim’s trigger-happy immune system, or if it’s just giving him a temporary fix and he’ll actually die of cancer a year from now.  And that’s not even taking into account the emotional and psychological trauma associated with _dying,_ the guilt over losing crew members, the possibility of developing a depersonalization disorder from having someone else’s biomaterial in him (Leonard’s studied pre-stem organ transplant cases where the recipients have ripped out everything from skin grafts to new kidneys). 

Plus, the PT is going to be absolute hell for both of them, because Jim’s going to be cranky and bored and Leonard’s going to have to play babysitter, _again._

Hell, maybe he should keep Jim under for longer than a couple more days.

“Doctor.”

“Commander,” Leonard replies, without bothering to look up from his tricorder.  These days, he could set the clock by Spock’s visits.  “Come to see Sleeping Beauty?”

“Yes,” Spock says, after a pause.  Then, after a longer pause, “He has regained his... hair,” he adds, as if it’s physically difficult for him to not use a more scientific term.

“Re-grew it just this morning,” Leonard says, and moves out of the way to let Spock approach the bed.  “He’s a vain little bastard, wouldn’t want him to wake up bald and go into cardiac arrest again.”

“The cause is hardly sufficient, Doctor,” Spock murmurs.  He’s in his dress greys again (must have just come from another meeting), posture its usual ramrod straight, hands tucked neatly behind his back.

Those hands had been a mess when he’d brought Khan in: four broken fingers, both wrists sprained, his knuckles like raw meat.  It didn’t take a genius to match up those injuries with the cuts and contusions on Khan’s face, the cracked ribs, the broken arm; Leonard could only imagine how hard Spock must have hit him, to be able to even leave a mark on that super soldier skin, much less beat Khan literally half to death.  So much for that renowned Vulcan pacifism – but then again, Spock’s always been a little _volatile_ , when it involved Jim.

“Is there any change to his prognosis?” Spock asks, gazing down at Jim as Leonard takes a blood sample.

He shrugs.  “Not really.”  Jim’s white blood cell count is still low; he’ll need to stay on the antibiotics for a while longer.  “He’ll probably make a full recovery.”  Leonard shakes his head.  “Kid must have a whole _garrison_ of angels watching over him, the way he pulls dumbass stunts like this.”

There’s a moment of silence as Leonard waits for the inevitable response of _“angels are illogical,”_ or something along those lines.  When it doesn’t come, he turns and looks at Spock, who is still standing ramrod straight with his hands behind his back, staring at Jim with a blank expression on his face.  Or at least, it’s blank to Leonard; if Jim were awake, he’d probably be able to figure out what Spock’s thinking by the angle of his eyebrows, but Leonard hasn’t put in the hours of study that Jim has.  Besides, Leonard’s terrible at reading people – he didn’t even know that he and Jocelyn were over until she served him the papers.

“The captain’s actions were logical,” Spock says, finally, and it’s only the slight hesitation in his voice – plus the memory of Uhura saying “ _he would have killed him, I’m sure of it” –_ that stops Leonard from rolling his eyes in disgust.  “As were mine, on the planet Nibiru.  At the time, I judged one death to be an acceptable loss for the survival of many.”

Leonard glances down at Jim, then back at Spock.  “And now?”

“I realize that this line of logic is based on the premise that all lives possess equal weight,” Spock says, very quietly.  “Recent events suggest that this is, perhaps, not the case.”

Leonard’s not sure what his expression looks like right now, but he hopes it’s not as gobsmacked as he feels.  “Isn’t that a bit... illogical?” he asks, lightly.

“Yes,” Spock says, and maybe it’s just Leonard’s mind playing tricks on him, but he swears he sees something in Spock’s eyes that makes him look almost... human.  “But I believe it might be true, nonetheless.”

_Well.  I’ll be damned._

Then, Spock blinks, and looks up at Leonard, and there’s suddenly nothing but cold, Vulcan logic on that face.  “Excuse me, Doctor, I must return to my duties,” he says, as he takes his leave at a pace that, if it was anyone else, Leonard would call an attempt to run away.

“Spock,” Leonard calls, when he’s just at the door.

The Vulcan stops, and turns.

There are things that Leonard wants to say to Spock, things like: “ _be careful with him, he’s not as indestructible as he pretends to be”_ and “ _I hope you know what you’re getting yourselves into”_ and “ _I don’t like you, I’ve never liked you because you’re all logic and all logic’s ever given me is misery, but Jim thinks you’re good for each other and sometimes, I think I almost see it too.”_

He says none of those things.  Instead, he says, “We’re going to wake him up in two days.  I’ll message you when it’s time.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Spock replies, and Leonard thinks that he might actually mean that.  With a final nod, Spock walks out.

Leonard looks back down at his friend, stupid and reckless and _alive,_ sleeping peacefully with the biologically impossible blood of a superhuman megalomaniac coursing through his vascular system; his friend who has saved Earth twice now, who regularly does three impossible things before breakfast, who can bend even the steel of Vulcan logic.

And for the first time in two weeks, Leonard McCoy laughs. _Damn it, I knew I should have picked another seat on that shuttle._

**Author's Note:**

> My first public foray into the world of Star Trek fic! This one was actually a lot harder to write than I thought it would be; I hadn't anticipated how uncommunicative Spock and McCoy would be in each other's presence, and that made writing their conversation, and McCoy's subsequent realization about Spock's feelings for Jim, really difficult to convey.


End file.
